jiàn
sword
Phonosemantic compound. 刂 represents the meaning and 僉 represents the sound.
Evolution

Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 劍
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
double-edged sword | ||
(double-edged) sword | ||
Cambridge | ||
fencing | ||
fencer (i.e. sportsman involved in fencing) |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*s.kr[a]m-s | kjaemH | jiàn | sword |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 7.6245% of movies
1678th most common character in movies
869th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 15 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+528D |
Shuowen | “劒,人所帶兵也。从刃,僉聲。劍,籀文劒从刀。” |
Sources
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